U.S. embassy won’t move to Jerusalem before peace plan given a shot: Trump

(JTA) — President Donald Trump said he will not move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem until after his administration’s peace plan has a chance to be implemented.

The U.S. peace proposal is still in the planning stages and has not been announced.

Trump appeared on a talk show on the Christian Trinity Broadcast Network Saturday hosted by former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

Trump said during the interview that a decision on moving the embassy would be made “in the not too distant future.” He added that it would not be implemented before the peace proposal was given a chance to succeed.

“I want to give that a shot before I even think about moving the embassy to Jerusalem,” Trump told Huckabee.

Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was a Trump campaign promise, which he has not made good on since assuming office in January.

In June, Trump signed a waiver delaying the implementation of the Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by Congress in 1995, which mandates the move of the embassy to Jerusalem. The waiver can be signed every six months and has been signed by every president since the law was passed. It will come up again in January 2018.

Trump also said during the interview of the yet unannounced peace plan that his administration is “working on a plan that everybody says will never work, because for many, many years it never worked – they say it’s the toughest deal of all, peace between Israel and the Palestinians, so we’re going to work on that, and if that doesn’t work, which is possible, to be totally honest – some people say it’s impossible, but I don’t think it’s impossible, and I think that’s something that can happen, and I don’t want to make any predictions.”

Trump has called making peace between Israel and the Palestinians the “ultimate deal.”

During the interview with Huckabee, Trump also called the Iran nuclear deal “terrible” but did not say whether or not he would pull the United States out of the agreement.“I can tell you I’m very unhappy with the deal. The spirit is not there,” he said.

“You will see what I will be doing… Iran is a bad player and they will be taken care of as a bad player,” he also said.

Huckabee is the father of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.

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